Presumption of guilt doesn’t make prosecution case ‘gospel truth’: SC

A bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and NV Anjaria gave this ruling

NEW DELHI: In a judgment that will impact as many as nine penal laws, Supreme Court has ruled that the stringent provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act providing for presumption of guilt of the accused must not persuade trial courts to believe the prosecution’s case to be the “gospel truth”.A bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and N V Anjaria gave this ruling while setting aside concurrent judgments of a Delhi court and Delhi HC convicting a man, whom a woman had falsely accused of sexually assaulting her minor daughter in a Kalkaji slum in south Delhi in 2015. It said the accusation was part of a long-standing feud over water the woman had with him.The bench said both the trial court and HC appeared to have been swayed by the presumption of guilt provision in Pocso Act and overlooked glaring discrepancies and loopholes in the mother’s testimony despite these being highlighted by the accused during cross-examination. Writing the judgment, Justice Anjaria said presumption of guilt in Pocso Act did not operate to eliminate evidence standing in favour of the accused.The statutory presumptions cannot be read to mean that the prosecution version is liable to be treated as gospel truth in every case,” he said.The presumptive provision cannot unburden courts from “discharging their essential duty to analyse the evidence on record in light of the features emerging in a particular case”, he added.This ruling will potentially impact provisions of presumption of guilt against the accused, or casting reverse burden on them, in eight other laws – Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, Prevention of Corruption Act, Wild Life (Protection) Act, Essential Commodities Act, Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, Customs Act, Foreign Exchange Management Act, and Negotiable Instruments Act, which were specifically mentioned in the 42-page judgment.

Justices Mishra and Anjaria said, “The court should not mechanically accept the ipse dixit of the prosecution riding on the provisions regarding presumption of guilt to give a stamp of approval to every prosecution even if they are absurd or improbable in its story.”It said the provision, or the rule of reverse burden requiring the accused to prove his innocence, did not change the rule of standard of proof as normally applied in criminal cases.